


the kiss of the salt-sweet breeze

by cartoonmoomba



Series: I walked around the world until I found my gravestone [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: 3.4 Spoilers, AU: WoL, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 21:41:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8302151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartoonmoomba/pseuds/cartoonmoomba
Summary: She kisses him the way she's kissed other men before, perhaps in a bid to remember the laughter of the one she loved who now occupies as a void in her soul. His hand moves and the back of his palm rests on her cheek, stone cold and lifeless. She wonders what they had to give up to travel to her Eorzea, if they used similar methods to the Ascions they now follow.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I caved and wrote this because 3.4 broke my heart. WoL is my own.
> 
> Disclaimer: Final Fantasy XIV does not belong to me.

"Warrior of Darkness," she says and her voice has a mocking tilt to it. She is tired and she is broken, burdened by all that she has done for Ishgard. Bodies lie not even cold in their graves yet and here she is once again, on the path of the next journey. She wants to shrivel up and sleep. She has contemplated stepping into a void the last time she was sent on a mission to Mhach, just to find that eternal sleep she so desperately desires in times like these. 

The Midlander's lips are stretched into a smirk. He does not give her his name; she wonders if he even knows hers. She knows the burden that is remembering the names of all those she comes across in her travels. 

Her fingers tingle with a contained Thunder spell. A child's plaything - her skin burns as she walks to where he stands, slowly and with no pretenses. She is not afraid to die right now, not in this Gods-forsaken hour of the night where everything feels muffled by the quiet of the stars and the cottony feeling of bone-deep weariness. His fingers twitch for the axe at his back; she catalogues this, the same way she catalogues the six o'clock shadow darkening his face and the way his eyes burn hotly into hers. When she stops before him, close enough to smell the sweat of his skin and a scent that belies any other she's ever known, he still has not moved. 

(A part of her wishes that he had gone for that axe, the swing of it and the cold bite into her flesh—)

"Are you really going to kill me?" She says soft and sure, the top of her head barely brushing at his jaw as she cranes her head upwards. "Are you ready to make this sacrifice for the sake of your world?"

She gambles, she knows this; but if he was the First's Warrior of Light then she can't help but feel a kinship, feel like she knows his boundaries and where he draws the line, where _she_ would draw the line—

His hand moves and the back of his palm rests on her cheek, stone cold and lifeless. She wonders what they had to give up to travel to her Eorzea, if they used similar methods to the Ascions they now follow.

"Warrior of Light," he calls her and his words have the same mocking tilt as hers did. He knows the weight of that title, the dead souls she carries on her shoulders and the expectations of those still living. Suddenly she feels sad; for herself, for him and his friends, for the world they're so desperate to save. What would she do, if she were in his situation? 

The corners of her smile teem with bitterness. "Aren't your friends wondering where you are?"

The hand on her cheeks drop to his side only to move to her hair a second later. She lets him touch her at his will, if only for the brief look of anguish that passes over his face as he moves his fingers through her hair. "Aren't yours?" He asks her back and then almost as if he didn't mean to – "You are so alive. How? The Light festers under your skin. I can feel it even now. How do you follow Her even after all the times she has failed you?"

She sees herself in him, the same way she knows he sees himself in her. The crystal within her chest pulses and she cranes her head upward. "I'm sorry," she tells him and she is apologizing for nothing. She is apologizing for everything. Her eyes burn with sudden unshed tears.

She kisses him the way she's kissed other men before, perhaps in a bid to remember the laughter of the one she loved who now occupies as a void in her soul. His lips against hers are frigid even when he kisses her back, a chaste moment that turns into something more when he moves to grip at her waist and her hands slide around his neck. 

She pulls back and thinks she can see some colour in his cheeks, a shadow of the man he once must have been: handsome and kind, a man she maybe once would have blushed at and turned her head. But she is no longer the girl she once was and he is no longer a Warrior of Light. If there is kindness still left in him, it is buried under despair. 

They stare at each other then, in silence. She moves back first, turning her back to him as she leaves the pier and heads in the direction of her awaiting mount. They don't exchange words; they don't need to. Once they would have been the same, two sides of the same coin. Both noble and gentle and loyal to protecting their world.

She does not blame him for anything, whether it has already come to pass or is yet coming. When she looks at him she sees herself reflected back and so she doesn't. The night air is cold around her as she rides. She doesn’t glance back to where he stands as a monument against the ocean, not even once. 

Come dawn this will have never happened. Her lips feel numb but her heart feels slightly thawed. When she faces him next, she will give him no quarter.

It is what the Warrior of Light is expected to do, after all.


End file.
